by Judith Field
The hut stopped, poised on one leg, and emitted a piercing wail like a hundred kettles boiling over. It staggered back step by graceless step, gaining momentum, crashed through the fence and ran off across the barren hills, wreathed in flame. Bone Mother stood and listened to its keening until the sound faded and died.
Behind her, the gate sagged open on broken hinges.
¤
Bone Mother slept that night under a shelter she made out of blankets, in front of the embers of the fire. Her dreams fluttered through the night, one becoming another with no trace left behind, until she found herself walking through the nighttime forest. The trees were well-spaced, and through them she could see the glow of a fire. A tall, strong woman with a tangle of dark hair turned from the brightness to peer into the shadowed woods. Impatiently, the woman gestured Bone Mother closer.
“Who are you?” she asked, warming her chilled hands at the fire.
“Root Mother,” the tall woman replied. “But be quiet now, and watch.”
The dark woman pointed across the clearing. A young girl stood next to a rough stone well. In her hands was a broad wooden bowl. Bone Mother and the dark woman watched in silence as the first flush of dawn lightened the sky. Between one heartbeat and the next, a black stag appeared in the clearing, sharp hooves slashing the wet grass. Bone Mother gasped, afraid for the child, and the stag turned. For a moment, Bone Mother thought she saw stars tangled in the stag’s antlers. Then it lowered its head to drink from the girl’s bowl.
“This is what we’re for,” the tall woman said, “all of the Mothers. We guard the well, and preserve the cycle of the days.”
As the sun crested the horizon the stag stamped impatiently, flinging glowing drops of water into the air. The girl murmured something to the stag and bowed, and with a leap the black beast disappeared into the west.
Bone Mother woke to the click of hooves on stone. Tsvesti thrust her head into the shelter and butted the old woman’s legs, waiting to be milked. Bone Mother sighed and rose stiffly.
“In a moment,” the old woman said, pushing the goat aside. “There’s something I have to do first.”
Although the sky was choked with gray clouds, Bone Mother knew it must be dawn. The black rider waited motionless by the well. The rider’s shoulders seemed hunched beneath the cloak, and the black horse stood with splayed legs, its head hanging between its knees. Bone Mother’s heart squeezed painfully in her chest. She rushed to the well and hauled the bucket up with her ropy old arms. Bone Mother dipped the cup into the clear water, then placed the bucket on the ground for the black horse. For a moment, it didn’t move. Then it lifted its head, snuffled the water, and lowered its nose to drink noisily.
Bone Mother offered the cup to the rider. “Refresh yourself after your labors,” she whispered. The rider returned the cup, and nodded its cowled head once. The black horse lifted its head from the empty bucket and gazed at Bone Mother with a dark eye. Gently, it stretched to mumble at her hand with its soft lips, then shook its mane vigorously and answered the rider’s rein to spring away. As the black rider disappeared, the first fingers of sun broke through the clouds to spill into the ash-filled yard and the first, delicate flakes of winter floated down.
Bone Mother wiped her cloudy eyes. It was time to milk the goats.
Over the next few weeks the rest of the goats came straggling back, and most of the chickens (those smart enough not to drown in the rain, Bone Mother opined to Tsvesti). She took her ax into the woods every day to gather branches and small trees for firewood and to make a shelter sturdy enough to last the winter. She decided to leave the fence standing, since it gave them all some protection from the wind and kept the chickens from wandering off to be eaten by something lean and toothy.
One bright morning, as Bone Mother was cleaning a winter hare from one of her snares, a man cleared his throat politely from the other side of the still-broken gate. The old woman set the hare pelt aside carefully. After she tanned it with ashes, she could use it to patch her boots.
“Go away,” she called to the man at her gate. “I’m not giving advice anymore.”
“Oh,” the man replied. After a minute, he asked, “Well, then, Old Mother, is there something I can do for you? I can fix this gate, if you like.”
“Hmph,” Bone Mother snorted. But she pushed the crooked gate open and let him in.
Nikolai was a woodcrafter, and that day he fixed the gate, built a roost for the chickens, and made a fence to keep the goats out of the place the old woman chose for next spring’s garden. In the evening, they sat by the fire. Nikolai shared the piece of cow’s cheese and a loaf studded with dried fruit from his pack, and Bone Mother cooked the rabbit and brought out a comb of winter honey. As they ate, the man told her about his wife, who died from a wasting disease no doctor could cure, and his bright-haired daughter who was more dear to him than any wealth.
The next day, Nikolai chopped a prodigious amount of wood. As he worked, Bone Mother heated water over the cook fire.
“Come,” she said, “have some tea before you return to your village.” She gave him a steaming clay cup and he drank, grimacing at the taste of the herbs. Bone Mother took the half-full cup from his hand and drank the rest, eyes closed in concentration. Slowly, she opened her eyes and stirred the dregs in the cup with her finger, as if to change what she found there.
“Find a woman who will make a home for your daughter. Choose wisely, but hurry.”
Nikolai frowned, and nodded. “A girl needs more than a rough man like me for company.” He took Bone Mother’s spotted, calloused hands in his own. “Thank you for your wisdom, Old Mother. I will send you gifts when I return home.
Unexpected sadness opened in Bone Mother’s heart. Had she had a father once, a strong, plain-spoken man like this? What would this man’s daughter do, without him? “There’s no need,” she said, turning away to hide her damp eyes. “You’ve already repaid me.”
“I’ll return later this winter to cut you more firewood,” the tall man said as he slung his pack over his shoulder. He walked quickly through the gate and into the forest beyond. “Blessings on you!” he called, and disappeared into the trees.
“And also on you,” she whispered, knowing that she wouldn’t see him again.
Brushing her hands together, Bone Mother turned. “Get away from there!” she said, shooing Tsvesti away from the last of the bread. “We have work to do.”
Nikolai did not return that winter, but Bone Mother had more than enough firewood. As the ground softened in spring, the old woman decided to build a new house on the flat place where the hut once squatted. “A round house,” she told Tsvesti, “with a sod roof that will bloom with wildflowers.” She measured, and considered, and finally laid a circle of stones for an outline. “I’ll put the door here, Tsvesti. So we can see the sun rise every morning.” The piebald goat nosed the stones, then shook her long ears and wandered away.
The old woman laid a foundation of smooth stones she gathered from the river, and built the walls up course by course with wood and wattle. One day, as the bees sang through her new garden, Bone Mother was working dried grass into river clay to smooth over the walls of her finished house when a voice came from outside the gate.
“Old Mother, are you there? You met my father.”
Bone Mother brushed wisps of gray hair out of her face and opened the gate. A sturdy, tall girl with blond hair stood waiting. She carried a large pack on her back and a bundle in her hand.
“Who is your father, girl?”
“Nikolai was his name. I am Vasilia.”
“I remember your father,” the old woman said. “Is he well?”
“He died last winter,” Vasilia said, “of the same sickness that took my mother.”
The creases in Bone Mother’s face deepened.
“He married a woman from the next village before he died,” the girl continued. “But his wife wants to return to her own village now. She’s sold the house and father
’s tools, and she’s sending me to live with her sister across the river. I’ve decided not to go, though,” she confided. “I dream of stranger things than cleaning someone’s house and caring for her children.”
“Come inside,” Bone Mother gestured. “I have fresh goat’s milk and some millet porridge.”
Vasilia followed the old woman inside the new house. Its walls were still rough in the places where Bone Mother had yet to seal them with daub, and the wood smelled like the memory of trees. The round hut was snug and bright. Shelves stuck out from the walls, covered with pots and jars and trinkets. Bunches of dried flowers and herbs hung from the spiraled roof beams, and Bone Mother’s spinning wheel stood by the stone hearth.
“My father often spoke of you,” the girl said, removing her pack with a grateful sigh. “He meant to come back, but…” Her voice trailed away.
Vasilia shook her head, dismissing the memories. “So, I came instead, to bring you the gifts he meant to bring.” She opened the bundle she carried and brought out carefully wrapped jars. “Here are berry preserves I put up last fall. And this is tea I make from the roses in my mother’s garden. My mother grew roses as white as new snow, with blue shadows deep inside.” The girl reached out to scratch between the ears of an inquisitive goat that stuck its head inside the open door.
“These are fine gifts, girl.” Bone Mother pointed to the kettle. “Will you make the tea while I tend the well?” The old woman went outside, and Vasilia put some rose tea in the kettle to steep. Through the door, she could see the old woman lift a cup to the rider of a white horse.
When Bone Mother returned, Vasilia poured the tea. They blew gently into their cups, inhaling the delicately scented steam. “Blue roses, eh?” the old woman said, and took a sip.
For a moment, the sun seemed very bright in Bone Mother’s eyes. Blinking, she heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Blue roses, yes,” then her eyes cleared and she stared, astonished, at the sturdy, straight-backed old woman standing in her kitchen. “Who…” she began, setting her cup down on the small table. Her hand holding the cup was strong and smooth.
The strange old woman smiled at her. “Who am I? Well,” the old woman frowned in thought, “I’m not really sure. But I think my name is… Oak Mother.” The frown disappeared, and she nodded firmly. “Yes, that’s it. Now, do you want some milk and porridge with your tea?”
“No, Oak Mother,” the girl who was no longer Bone Mother said, taking up Vasilia’s pack and settling it on her shoulders. “I’d better be going.”
“Blessings on you, child.”
“And also on you,” she replied. A piebald goat with a broken horn followed her to the gate. The girl scratched Tsvesti between the ears a final time. “Go on, now,” she said, and pushed the goat away.
With a final vigorous headbutt, Tsvesti trotted back toward the hut. The girl who once was Bone Mother stood in the gate for a moment, and then started toward the path that led through the forest and out into the unknown world beyond.
Torah Cottrill lived and traveled all over the world, including a stint as a Foreign Service Officer in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, before settling in the Pacific Northwest with a fixed number of children and a variable number of pets. By day she’s an editor; in the evenings, she ties on her dark mask and prowls the rooftops, moonlighting as a writer.
ALEPH
By Brandon Nolta
GRAINS OF SNOW pelted the dirty window overlooking the city, fulfilling the promise Sergei felt in his ruined knee when he awoke that morning. He shifted his weight in the chair and waited for the WPA official to finish reading. Across the younger man’s desk, folders and forms spilled like water, a puddle of ink and bureaucracy turning slowly into a sea. Sergei thought of a life spent with such forms, filling in check boxes and empty lines, and felt a spark of pity arc through him. His career—really, his life—was over, but he had at least tasted glory.
The official sighed and put Sergei’s packet down on the desk. “I’m sorry, Mr. Androv, but I can’t put you on this project. This group will be assigned to the Department of the Interior; all our project workers will be required to hike through national parklands. Workers will be expected to hike up to 10 miles a day, and—well, your records…”
Sergei nodded once, sharply. He knew what they said; the ruined landscape of his knee, the runnels of scar tissue left in the operations’ wake, were clear enough. Flashes of muscle memory, the stretch and lift of a flawless plié, shot through him. Did Irena think of these things as she recovered, the pain of a broken floating rib distracting her from the flaw that ended him? She begged his forgiveness in the aftermath, as he lay on the stage, leg afire in the awful moments after his life ended in the snap of a tendon. Sergei had not seen her since.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Androv,” the official said, attempting a reassuring smile. “The WPA has a number of projects in the works, and I’m certain we can find one for a man of your talent and obvious fitness.” Shutting the folder of Sergei’s life, the official moved it to the top of a pile that might as well be bound for the incinerator. His pale eyes did not meet Sergei’s. “I’ll notify you when I have something.”
If, Sergei thought. The last of the money from the repertory, an extravagance of guilt on the director’s part, was almost gone. How much longer could he wait?
The former master dancer, a peer of the immortal Nijinsky, gained his feet. Echoes of discipline and grace still haunted his movements.
¤
Every time he saw Androv, the official wished he had seen the man in his prime, before the accident that ruined him. He must have been something, the official thought as Sergei Androv shook his hand gravely and strode from the office, a slight roll in the gait on his right side the only sign of injury.
The official sighed, his eyes roving over the seemingly endless files and folders that buried his desk, and thought about Androv’s case. The dancer was educated, disciplined and fit, but his dance experience didn’t fit any of the positions the official—whose name was Lowe—could legitimately assign to him, and with a ruined leg, he couldn’t put him in either of the federally funded troupes. Despite what his bosses thought, Lowe tried to find jobs that suited his clients, at least until America recovered and the government didn’t have to provide work.
Lowe opened his desk drawer on a whim, and dug through the papers there until he found a thick-stocked business card. He held it up to the light, tilting it as he thought about the factory owner who’d given it to him. It was a simple card, with the business name embossed in black on the front and a telephone number beneath. He wasn’t sure he believed what the owner had told him, and he knew that many of his clients wouldn’t work for this particular employer—the last client he’d tried to refer to this employer told him he wouldn’t work for a damn Jew, depression or no—but Androv might not be concerned with that, and except for the knee, he was exceptionally strong and fit, which is what Mr. Shelman wanted.
Then he remembered the look in Androv’s eye, the almost invisible slump in his shoulders as Lowe gave him the bad news, and Lowe—whose grandfather, decades before, had abbreviated his last name from Lowenski at Ellis Island—knew Androv would take the chance. He picked up the receiver, gave the operator the number, and waited to speak to Mr. Shelman.
¤
February cold skirled around Sergei as he trudged through the gritty courtyard to Shelman Ironworks, a cavernous block of windows and walls at the far end of the 76 line, one stop from where all train trips went to die quietly by the sea. The front doors were open despite the cold; Sergei felt the tremendous heat of the foundry several steps before he was inside. A stocky man, thick with muscle and topped with a threadbare wool beret, waved him over.
“You Androv?” the man asked. Sergei nodded. He heard Belarus in the man’s voice.
“I’m Konetko. This way.” The man led Sergei up a rickety stairway to a dingy-walled office overlooking the ironworks floor. Daylight echoed from the high windows and the far end of
the building, but illuminated nothing more than shadows slowly moving around pits of liquid fire and falls of steel. A square man sat behind an oblong desk. Konetko nodded at the desk, turned and closed the door behind him as he left.
“Anton Shelman,” the square man said, rising to meet Sergei. His handshake was firm and warm. “Mr. Lowe tells me you’d be a good fit for my factory, Mr. Androv. What do you think?”
Surprised by Shelman’s directness, Sergei fell back on the truth. “I know nothing of metal work or foundries, Mr. Shelman, but I’m willing to learn if you will teach.”
“What do you know of my business, Mr. Androv?”
Sergei shrugged. “It is an ironworks, a fact I didn’t learn until this morning. Mr. Lowe didn’t explain his reasoning to me, but…”
“You trust him.”
Again, Sergei shrugged. “I would like to.”
“That’s something,” Shelman said. “Got any problem working for Jews? I am, most of the management is, and about half the floor crew, so if you’re an anti-Semite, best keep walking.”
“Do you have problems with Russians?” Sergei asked.
Shelman laughed. “You work well, you’re my favorite color. Don’t give a damn about anything else.”
“As long as I have work, I also do not care,” Sergei said. “Any man who works is fine with me.”
Shelman nodded, looking Sergei up and down. Despite his knee, Sergei maintained his physical discipline, and had the muscled arms and broad torso to prove it. More importantly, Shelman saw, the former dancer was comfortable in his strength, and didn’t need to show off. That attitude was almost as important.
“When can you start?” Shelman said.
Sergei took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
Shelman laughed. “Let’s get you to the floor.”
The owner led Sergei down the steps, deeper into the cavernous heat of the works. Sergei felt the sweat break out on his heat-taut skin, and relished the feeling. It was wonderful to feel sweat that wasn’t borne of pain or mindless exercise. The men strode past docks and vats and systems that seemed of simple design but mysterious purpose, but Sergei knew he would learn in time. He looked forward to discovering the mysteries of metal, and why the WPA official thought he would fit in here.